Check this out!

This week you may or may not have “celebrated” Columbus Day. This week the Christmas season began in the Dominican Republic. This week the baseball season also begins – Vamos Estrellas! This week we welcomed five new kittens into the world. This week I spent some time on the internet.

Articles/blog posts:

To Be Inconvenienced at A Deeper Story – A good word. A challenging word. We could all do with a little more inconvenience.

It’s not the school’s fault if your kid is a lazy wuss at The Matt Walsh Blog – Hah. Fortunately we don’t really have this problem in the Dominican Republic. And we can add this playground mania to the list of reasons why I have no desire to ever teach in the United States.

The True Story of a Seven Year Marriage at Fly Softly My Love – I read this a while ago but stumbled across it again this week. It takes a beautiful and vulnerable courage to admit our lives aren’t as perfect as we always thought they’d be. But without that courage, we wouldn’t be able to rejoice together over the growth that happens!

Human trafficking ring in Houston at KXAN – It’s so easy to ignore when it’s someone else’s problem, but human trafficking is your problem too, America. Devastatingly sad, but true. What can we do about it?

Columbus Day at The Oatmeal – Informative and inspiring. It’s easy enough to tear something down, but to raise up something better in it’s place is not only harder, but also better.

Parks and Recreation Season 5 on Netflix – Wahoo! I finally found the secret code to tricking Netflix into thinking I’m in the United States. I honestly didn’t realize what I was missing. I was perfectly content with my Dominican Netflix. Now there’s no going back and I finally got to watch Ben propose to Leslie. (I totally didn’t see it coming!) I’m loving this season, of course. In my mind, Parks and Rec is just steadily good.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 14 at CBS.com – CSI has always been one of my favorite shows and I could never find a place to watch it online in this foreign land. Finally (armed with the aforementioned secret code) I can watch CSI on my computer! I did, however, miss Season 13 in its entirety and for this I am sad. If anyone knows anywhere safe in internet-land I can watch CSI Season 13 without downloading or paying anything, let me know. Just as an FYI, Nick Stokes is my favorite fictional character. Ever. He’s my fake husband.

Books:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum – I started a book challenge (I love challenges! And goals! And lists!) and I better pick up the pace if I ever want to finish! One book a week isn’t going to cut it! Anyway, I’ll be offering my opinion on these books over here, so this is the last time you’ll see Books in a “Check this out!” for a while. P.S. Clicking on the book title will take you to Amazon.com where you can buy the entire Oz Collection for 99 cents. What a darn bargain for some of the strangest books to be made into some of the creepiest movies.

Music:

Pandora!!! Ever since I incorrectly transferred my music from my old broken laptop to my new currently-using laptop (“incorrectly” here means “didn’t actually do it at all”) I have been YouTubing playlists (which isn’t all bad) and listening to the two CDs people gave me this summer over and over. But with my new secret code, the internet world of music is my oyster via good ol’ Pandora. (I prefer Spotify, but Spotify is not easily tricked.) I’ve been listening to The Lumineers Radio this week.

(YouTube) Videos:

Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #1 by Jimmy Kimmel Live – These are really funny. Once you watch #1, just go ahead and watch the rest. Then tweet something nice to your favorite celeb.

“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.” – 12 Things You Should Know for Sure byMarc Chernoff

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

That’s me!Hah. Poor Pawnee.My friend Jena Bea is traveling the world on The World Race. This is a picture she took while working with El Shaddai Orphanage in Mbabane, Swaziland. You can click on the picture to read her blog and/or help her finish funding her journey!